Two candidates, little enthusiasm: Carrie Kahn's Brazil election short for NPR
The short report hears voters say both presidential candidates are corrupt, and its comment section turned into a worldwide conversation about political fatigue.
NPRStory of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 256,882 views a day, 28 times a normal first day on this channel (9,148).
Brazilians are voting in this year’s presidential election, but voters are feeling disconnected
It had been online for only fourteen hours, and NPR's short report from Brazil was already close to 200,000 views. That is more than twenty times what a new video on the channel usually gathers in a full first day.
The report comes from Carrie Kahn, NPR's South America correspondent, with producer Keren Carrión. The premise is in the title: Brazilians are choosing a president, but many of them feel disconnected from the choice. The complaint Kahn hears from voters is that both candidates are corrupt. That feeling carries extra weight in Brazil, where voting is compulsory for literate adults between 18 and 70. A voter who has given up on the options still has to show up or justify staying home.
The comments arrived about seven times faster than on a typical NPR short. Much of the conversation is less about Brazil than about recognition. One of the most liked replies says it is hard to name any country where people feel hopeful about politics. Another thread debates the labels NPR uses for the two camps.
It is the second NPR news piece in a week to travel far beyond the channel's usual audience, after Mara Liasson's safety-net report, as we reported here. The rest of the week's uploads were more scattered. Tom Bowman covered Pete Hegseth's "State of the Force" address, NPR got inside a startup that edits embryos, and a quieter story covered birds as loud as jackhammers. That last one also leads back to Brazil: some of its record-setting recordings were made there.
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- Channel
- NPR
- Subscribers
- 893,000 ▲ 9,000 this week
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 4,571,844
- Channel views, pace per day
- 520,664 (on a normal day: 598,964)
- Video published
- October 2, 2026
- Video views so far
- 196,270 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 256,882
The numbers
Here are the figures behind a short that drew a much bigger crowd than NPR's news clips usually find on their first day.
💡 Test your knowledge
Which city, purpose-built and inaugurated in 1960, is the capital of Brazil?
Brasília was built in the country's interior and replaced Rio de Janeiro as the capital in 1960.
